• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

She saw heads nod in silhouette to the right and left of her. They could feel the power.

Of course, if these Sith women showed the slightest sign of weakness or treachery, the Nightsisters would set upon them, kill them all, take their weapons and their shuttles. That was the way things were. Surely the Sith understood that.

The Nightsisters and their rancors arrayed themselves in a semicircle around the central shuttle. Dresdema stood ahead of the others. She raised her voice to be heard at a distance. “The Sisters of the Night are gathered. We welcome you, the sisters of the Sith.”

The boarding hatch of the central shuttle swung down, transforming into a set of stairs. Two robed, cloaked figures descended. The boarding hatches were lowering on the other shuttles as well, and two figures could be seen in each glowing portal.

The first Sith who had descended threw back her hood. A dark-haired woman, she carried a lightsaber at her belt like a Jedi. She, too, pitched her voice as a herald would. “I greet the Nightsisters in turn. Allow me to present our mission commander, Lord Gaalan.”

The second figure reached up to throw back a concealing hood. This Sith was exotic—lean, taller than Dresdema and broader of shoulder, beautiful of feature, with a skin that, in the light pouring from the shuttle hatch and out of the cockpit viewports, seemed lavender in color.

And he was unmistakably male.

Dresdema froze. This was a joke in very bad taste … or betrayal.

Nightsisters never went wrong betting on betrayal. Dresdema glanced down her line of sisters and rancors and opened her mouth to cry out an order. Only then did she notice that there were figures a dozen paces behind her line. She spared them a quick look.

Six men and women, dark-robed like those by the shuttles, unlit lightsabers in their hands, stood waiting. They had placed themselves behind the Nightsisters with such finesse that no one had noticed their arrival.

Dresdema issued her command: “Attack! Enemies ahead and to the rear!”

Well trained and experienced, her Nightsisters brought up weapons and began weaving attack spells. About half of them turned to confront the enemies to the rear. A moment later the rancors they controlled began to turn, too.

Dresdema turned back toward the shuttles, dropping her spear, her hands weaving a spell of flame that she intended for the man who dared try to trick her.

But the woman beside the lavender-skinned leader pointed at Dresdema and snapped her fingers almost casually. A glowing, twisting, crackling arc of purple-blue erupted from her hand and slammed into Dresdema’s chest.

She felt her body convulse, felt and saw her hair stand on end. It was lightning, far more concentrated than that which the Nightsisters knew how to hurl.

Dresdema jerked and spasmed, her body racked with pain. It did not deprive her of her senses, but she could not weave her spell, could not pick up her spear. She stumbled, fell to one knee.

She saw the lavender-skinned man go airborne as if hurled by a giant. He flew toward the rancor to Dresdema’s right. The lightsaber now in his hand glowed into red light. The rancor reached for him but missed and the Sith man passed beside its head on the far side, bouncing off its shoulder, flipping to a preternaturally graceful landing behind the rancor.

The rancor’s head lolled toward Dresdema … then separated completely from its neck and fell free. The rancor’s body collapsed backward, the cauterized stump of its neck coming to ground a mere meter behind the man who had slain it. Its head bounced from the turf, rolled, and came to rest against Dresdema’s body. The smell of scorched flesh rose to her nostrils.

“No …” Dresdema forced the word out. She managed to get her shaking hands on her spear, then looked up just in time to see her lightning-wielding attacker stand directly before her. The Sith woman struck without weapons, her kick sending Dresdema’s spear into the air. The woman caught it, twirled it. Its butt cracked